Author: allencole
Date: 2007-05-24 06:42
Clive, a lot of the problem you'll find with the discussion of ear training is that the more literate the musician discussing it, the less experience that person probably has in depending on it. I wonder what some of our fixed-Do college ear training programs would be like if annual proficiency tests were required for all music faculty?
Like Clarnibass and so many of the others here, I learned at an early age to think through songs and figure out the pitches. But this was after growing up with a parent who could play by ear as well as read, experience playing both clarinet and guitar, and experience reading parts in an adult church choir--all by the eighth grade. That's a lot of background work to ask of a musician in the early stages of their learning process.
Plus, all this process then meets the instrument as a stranger. A world full of non-reading musicians have shown us the way, if we will only be willing to learn from them.
I regularly turn out begining players who have decent proficiency in playing by ear, and much of it was started to illustrate to them the usefulness of their scales. Early work in reverse-engineering pitches (and later rhythms) provides benefits that far outweigh the potential of waiting for a more advanced approach later on. If I where to be too esoteric in their ear training or their theory instruction, there would be no room for either in an instrumental lesson program. Keeping things simple and practical cause these same things to integrate with and enhance instrumental technique.
I still say, LEARN SONGS NOW. This will lead to natural interval learning. Getting from the end note of one verse to the beginning note of the next begins a progressive approach to identifying intervals, and utilizes your most common technical skills.
Think of passing your tangled hair through progressively finer combs.
Your major arpeggio is the afro comb. Very wide spacing allows the inexperienced to match common notes (1,3 & 5 as the most common beginning notes) , or the occasional note that comes in between them.
Your major scale is the normal comb. It contains the seven most likely notes for most common music, and the five least likely notes can be found in between various pairs of the seven.
Your chromatic scale is the fine comb, but will mostly be used to confirm info that has been produced from comparing to the major scale.
After some confidence building in this area, a song like "Do Re Mi" or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" can be used as a lab where students oversimply the song, and then begin to realize that the bridge doesn't sound quite right and needs some non-scale notes.
Why put off your ear activities in favor of studying intervals when you can discover it all by reverse engineering a rich world of common-knowledge songs?
On your Morse Code comparision:
The "hear the letter" (as opposed to counting the dots and dashes) method of morse code instruction seems to be the dominant one today. I learned via a packet that would send characters at rates of 5-15 wpm, but the speed of each individual character was 20 wpm. This was intended to prevent me from counting dots & dashes, and force me to recognize the character as a unit. It was the most effective method I ever tried and I believe that the ARRL adopted this methoc for their own packages.
I believe that scales and arpeggios (particuarly arpeggios) are handy to work as a single character. Students can be taught to do some neat things with arpeggios if they can do so without getting into levels of detail that hinder execution.
I agree with Clarnibass that a more detailed examination of intervals, etc. provides more complete coverage of the situation, but I would consider that an advanced study, not a basic one when instrumental performance is part of the package.
Allen Cole
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The Clarinet BBoard
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